Expansion gets preliminary nod from council

The Prince George Hospice House Society will have the room to grow.

During Monday night's meeting, city council approved third reading of a zoning and official community plan amendment that would allow the Hospice House at the corner of Ferry Avenue and Clapperton Street to purchase an adjacent plot of land.

The application calls for the currently vacant land to the north redesignated under the OCP from neighbourhood residential to community facility and rezoned from single residential to minor institutional.

Any future expansion of the facility also has to be approved under the provincial Community Care and Assisted Living Act, but the property could facilitate the Hospice House doubling in size to 20 palliative beds.

It's a plan that's favoured by the neighbourhood, according to a letter to the city from neighbour Harold Little.

"I have long been concerned that one day Area B [the land in question] would be sold to a developer for multi-family dwellings," Little wrote. "Had this happened, my neighbours and I were fully prepared to fight any rezoning application."

CABARET CALL

City council also gave the go-ahead to a new patio for a downtown venue.

Lambda Cabaret at 1177 Third Ave. applied to the city for a change to the zoning bylaw that would allow the nightclub to build a patio at the rear of the building.

Planning staff supported the application, saying "patios have the potential to activate the downtown streetscape after business hours."

Adding new language to the zoning bylaw to permit outdoor use for major liquor primary establishments in the C1: Downtown zone and to cap patio maximum occupancy at 20 people.

In a letter to the city downtown neighbour Howard Karpes expressed his objection to the plan, unless it was tied to a timeline ending with the conclusion of the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

"I see no practical reason for a liquor primary establishment to have an outdoor section in the downtown core," Karpes wrote. "The trash, debris and waste left from most of the liquor primary establishment customers is quite extensive as it is."

Karpes also cited a lack of practical space for a patio given a narrow sidewalk and a crowded back alley.

With council's approval, Learn to Earn Bartending school still has to apply to the Liquor Licensing and Control Board.

Similar applications from other downtown liquor primary venues would still have to come before council with the change to the zoning bylaw.